Crimson Rain
by Takeda Lee
Summary: [FFO part 2] Darkness has descended, the world's at war, sacred places desecrated and Hogwarts under constant seige. A group of five are its only salvation from drowning in the crimson rain, and they are constantly reevaluating if its worth saving at all.
1. Prologue

**FFOmega**

Part II: Crimson Rain

Prologue

The smell of burned rubber and melted metal rode the wind in every direction, signifying the arrival of the resulting fire. The buildings were aflame, the glass having melted and falling in scorching and horrible droplets like some kind of punishing precipitation from the frames they once stood proudly in.

The cold of the night wasn't warmed any by the raging fires, and if anything the cold only served to make it clear just how hot the flames were.

The blood stains were left behind in pools in the holes the footprints created, and the asphalt was melting and becoming porous and bendable. Cars were overturned and lit ablaze, and every so often the shake of an explosion sounds, but no one was around to care.

The only ones left alive in the damned city had other things to worry about.

Sword dragging through the slowly liquidizing concrete behind him, he trudged forward. His eyes were hidden by his hair, and his footsteps were strong and powerful as he pulled his foot from the grasp of the heated asphalt path beneath him, freeing himself every time he lifted his foot, fighting for every step, just to plunge his foot back into the melting pavement once again to begin the battle anew. But with each footfall came the echo of his blade cutting seamlessly through the melting concrete. And as if to answer, every echo was answered by a scream.

The wind was against him, but he had enough enemies to not even realize the addition of another. He was heading toward a large form in the middle of the street, in the middle of the city. It was the lone thing that had survived the cleansing fires that swept the streets.

With a final stride, he looked up to the statue in the center of the city. It was a statue of a person, a large form with a reptilian look to him, red gems for eyes, and long, outstretched wings reminiscent of a dragon's. The figure's arms were spread out wide, and its head raised, almost as if somehow wishing to rise up into heaven. And under the figure a plaque read, _"Supreme Overlord Voldemort hereby christens this city Slytherin's Haven. A new world will arise from the fallen ashes of this accursed modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, a true and pure place."_

Staring up at the statue, the figure raised the sword he wielded and with a slash that seemed tired and more powerful due to gravity than his own strength, he beheaded the stone and marble statue. And right down the middle the statue cracked and began to fall apart. And turning and walking away, the figure continued dragging the sword behind him.

And as the statue behind him cracked and fell to the ground in final defeat, behind it, a sign burned. The sign read, "Welcome to Downtown London!"

Suddenly there was a shout and a person ran from one of the burning houses. With a loud blast, the person slumped as they were shot directly in the head with extreme accuracy, placing a bullet right between the eyes. The chrome handgun spun in the armed figure's hand before it was put back in its holster. He looked around for a moment, and the fire danced across his form as he surveyed the place once more before he turned and crouched low and leapt.

He landed atop the only building left in the general area, a cathedral. Grasping onto the large steeple and looked down at the burning ruins of the heart of London for a long moment, he let out a sigh before turning his head as if to look away, and shut his eyes.

"Riddle, your ass is mine." He muttered, before his eyes shot open. The pure and bright emerald green radiated almost like a beacon in the flaming mass of red flames and gray ashes. He pushed his hair back once more, before he kicked the side of the steeple, breaking it off and sending it from the top of the cathedral down, where it impaled a figure that had been trying to aim a long staff of some sort up at him. Looking up into the sky, the clouds opened up with not a sound, but a blanket of unnatural silence, muting out even the sounds of the raging fires. Sweeping onto the city, it didn't build up slowly from a drizzle, it was a full on storm from the moment the clouds deemed it time to open up and release their burdens.

From the sky fell drops of not purest water, but ruby blood. It was a crimson rain onto the city, and it seemed to do nothing to calm the burning inferno that was once London, but instead almost seemed to spur it on, as if it was some sort of cheerleading force for the flames to work double-time to destroy everything in it's wake without any regard for what it was doing, or even natural law.

The flames crawled up the side of a building, over the roof in a solid trail, and seemed to literally _jump_ across gaps between buildings as it continued on toward it's path toward the man standing atop the now steeple-less cathedral, with no signs of thinking anything about stopping or slowing down at all. All it did was consume and destroy what was in front of it.

Glancing at the fire on its way to him, seemingly spurred on by the bloody downpour above, it reminded the figure of something. It was so much like the man in which the statue he had destroyed was a likeness of. All Voldemort did was destroy things without any regard for what it caused. Only way to win against something that destroys anything it sees with ease, is to do that which it does, just much better.

Sighing as the crimson rain fell from the sky onto him, doing anything but cleansing and rejuvenating him as rain was supposed to, he took one last look at the city that had once housed so many people, reduced to ashes. And with that committed to memory and a new sense of anger and resolve attached to his being, the man once known as Harry Potter, but known simply as Knight to those who feared him and worshipped him just alike, crouched low and leapt off into the distance of the night, disappearing into the deep, angry and unforgiving darkness of the sky.


	2. Chapter 1

**FFOmega**

Part II: Crimson Rain

Chapter 1

-----

Many Months Before…

-----

Raindrops fell like teardrops onto the heads of those walking through the forest. It had begun to pour like an ill omen, the moment they stepped off of the edge of the wards of the school. Lulu had made a statement about it, but it never was heard by the power of the water hitting the treetops.

Harry was toying with the handguns Baretta had given him, and allowing Blaise to lead him. He followed her footsteps as best he could hear them, still looking at the guns. They shimmered despite the darkness, and had a deadly glint to them, almost like a sword of some kind that allowed the light to travel along the deadly blade. Harry stopped suddenly, as he heard something behind him. He spun around and had enough time to dive out of the way as an acromantula dove at him. Rolling to the side, he spun and squared off with the large spider. Guns still in his hands, he aimed and fired.

He pulled the triggers, and found himself skidding backward across the ground. Looking, he saw the spider was missing a good many legs on its left side, to the point that it couldn't move. Harry slipped the guns away, as he wasn't used to them, and was about to simply walk away, when the beast made a loud screeching cry.

Suddenly Kyoto rushed to where Harry was, Blaise behind him and Lulu there as well. Baretta had two handguns out that were not his usual ones. They were black and looked to be what Harry figured as automatic guns called "Uzis" and they were fitted with laser sights. He was surveying the area with the sights, while Kyoto seemed to be looking around. "Harry…what just happened?" He asked, his voice edgy.

"I got attacked and I used the handguns to shoot at the damned spider. The guns are powerful as hell, I have to admit, but I need more practice with them. I think I will stick to what I know. Why?"

"Uh…Harry…look around." Kyoto muttered. Harry looked around, and saw that they were surrounded by masses and masses of acromantula before sighing and pulling out his sword. "You take the hundred on the left, I'll take the hundred on the right?" he muttered and Harry chuckled a bit, and they both crouched low and blasted themselves forward toward the enemies.

Blaise moved to follow, but Lulu held her back. She pointed, and Blaise squinted, watching as Harry and Kyoto quite literally looked like pinballs, jumping off of one tree and striking, just to bounce from another tree to do the same.

Lulu created a ball of fire in her hand so that they could all see, but they saw very little as, the moment she started the hovering ball of fire, Baretta smacked her in the head. "Put that shit out, you dumb bitch!" He shouted, before his guns began to discharge at a rapid rate, firing bullets at the rapidly closing in beasts that had, until then, left the three alone, opting to go after the two that were attacking them. "You did this, so start getting us out!"

Lulu was about to start chanting when she saw one of the spiders diving at her. She wouldn't be able to get a spell off in time. Suddenly the spider was skewered on Blaise's knife. She threw the spider to the ground before she ran off toward the last place she had seen Harry and Kyoto in. Lulu rolled her eyes and drew her scythes and began to attack.

One spider was de-legged, but by sheer force of will, it crawled using its front mandible toward Lulu. She gaped before she stabbed it through, and followed where Blaise had gone. Baretta took up the rear, shooting the spiders that got near him.

Soon enough, they were all together again in a clearing. Looking around, Harry realized something was wrong, as hordes of the spiders were all around the clearing, but none even tried to come in. They all seemed to be waiting.

Suddenly, through the trees came a large spider, it was huge, bigger than the rest, and to its sides were two other large spiders, both looking large and powerful. "Aragog…" Harry muttered. He rose his sword, and Blaise walked up to join him. Kyoto stepped back and pushed Lulu forward, and smiled.

"Three to a fight, so no one hits anyone else. We'll be here." He spoke sagely, before he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Baretta placed the Uzis somewhere else, and pulled out his personal handguns and began to spin them nervously, and he ejected the clips and placed in a separate set, with a bright red casing.

Harry rose his sword and saw the first opportunity to attack. He rushed forward and made to attack Aragog. However, before he could strike the huge beast, one of the flanking spiders got in the way and took the brunt of the attack to its underbelly. A huge slash appeared that slowly began to burn and decay on its own, but the creature was still able to move. Harry jumped back to allow for an attack by Blaise, who ran forward with both of her Slytherin Blades bared. She attacked the same spider that had blocked Harry's attack to the largest spider, and used the opportunity his attack had made as a means of capitalizing. The creature was nearly felled, but staggered to standing.

The second flanking spider, the one that was unharmed, blasted a shot of webbing that hit Blaise along her legs. She dropped to the ground and was hard pressed to move, as she tried to cut the webbing from her legs. Lulu began to cast a spell, and her scythes moved as she waved them, and there was silenced for some time. Then, suddenly, there seemed to be some kind of suction from in front of her, pulling air toward her and dragging the spiders in front of them forward a few feet, before it almost seemed like fire was being ejected back, wave after wave of fire seemingly coming from a whole in the middle of the air in a thick stream. It hit all three spiders and spread. The injured spider dropped dead on the ground, and Aragog finally took some damage, but seemed to not even be effected.

Aragog finally took an attack. It rushed forward and slammed into Harry, sending him backwards and into a tree. He landed in a crouched position and coughed loudly. Kyoto headed over toward him, but he shook him off. Harry was beginning to get angered by the spiders, as his taking of the attack seemed to have allowed the other spider to take an attack out on Blaise, sending her back toward him. He caught her and held her for a moment before he figured out what they could do.

Lulu had harmed the second flanking spider by connecting her scythes together and throwing the resulting chakram, which cut the spider deep and straight through in one place, were the disk spun back like a boomerang.

Harry ran forward, sword in one hand, but before he got to Aragog, he turned and crouched, putting his hands out over his knee, and Blaise, who had been running behind him ran toward him and put one foot up, and he caught it and used it to catapult her high into the air. From there and his crouch, he rushed forward to slash at Aragog. The blocking spider jumped in the way, and Harry slashed through it, like planned. The spider wasn't dead, but that didn't matter, as Aragog was.

Blaise twisted in the air, slipping the knives back, before she yanked out the Zabini Blades, and as she came down, sank them deep into the back of Aragog's head, and then slid down the creature's back with the knives still buried deep inside the large spider. The spider was dead instantly. Blaise got up and slipped the knives back in, before she dusted her hands off and walked back over to the group. The horde of acromantula that had been watched the fight scattered as their leader died, leaving the group of five to themselves. Harry kissed her lightly on the forehead, before they turned to Kyoto and Baretta. Kyoto smiled slightly, and Baretta shrugged.

Harry slid the sword back into its sheath as Baretta walked past Harry. The former muttered something to the latter and nodded his head toward the dead acromantula body, before walking off. Harry stared at the body for a moment and then pulled his guns out. He aimed at the downed Aragog, and started to fire. He didn't fly back, but his aim wasn't as good. Kyoto tossed him the white backpack, and he set it down, before he removed his jacket and the sword, and aimed around. "What's he doing?" Blaise asked Kyoto.

"Getting practice with the guns. I hate the damned things, but he will need to be able to use them eventually, so he is taking some time to learn to use them. I'd suggest you try and figure out some of your own attacks and such, not relying on Harry. Find out what kind of things you can do with the magical energy you have that won't kill your resources and can do the maximum damage possible. Because in the end, this thing we went through today is only the beginning, we still have a lot more to go through, and it would be best if you were ready."

-----

The wind was blowing outside of the small house in Surrey, and the 3 inhabitants groaned inside as the supports swayed slowly and softly. Petunia always prided herself as a good, religious woman, someone that was put on the earth for a purpose. For the longest, she believed her purpose was to stamp out the evil that was witchcraft, upon her finding her sister had it, and it was the cause of said sibling's death. However, since her nephew had mysteriously disappeared earlier in the summer, things have begun to get downright evil in her life.

Neighbors moved in to the house next door, and seemed to be perpetually trying to invite the now Vernon-less Dursleys over to their house. Petunia had yet to accept the invitation, feeling the people were a bit odd. The couple didn't have a car, nor any other means of transit it seemed, and yet they seemed to disappear from their house randomly and impossibly, and then just show up again. They dressed awkwardly, and seemed much too interested in the things Petunia deemed as weird.

She had awoken that particular night to the sound of the house swaying and shaking on its foundation, and she headed down for a cup of coffee. She wasn't tired, and had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that something was wrong. Walking down the hall, she heard a sound from Harry's old room. She entered, and listened to the sound of something whirring and spinning, until she was led to a loose floorboard in the room. She lifted it, and saw something that looked almost like a top spinning and flashing from its hiding place in an old wool sock. She looked at it before she tossed it away. Suddenly, she saw lights coming into the window from somewhere.

Running to the once-barred window, she looked out and saw she had a clear view of the new neighbor's backyard. And the flashing lights were coming from there. Looking, as she normally would, Petunia fainted outright.

In the center of a circle of people was a thin, pale, serpentine figure with red eyes. He was holding his hands outward, and there seemed to be a meeting going on. And before she lost consciousness, she watched as he slit open the wrists of a small child, someone she recognized as young Mark Evans from the neighborhood. He lifted the boy and drank from the bleeding wrists, before he seemed to burn and cauterize the wounds, lapping up the spilt blood. And with a deep and sick laugh, magical energy flared up so powerful that even Petunia felt it.

Passing out, Petunia's mind immediately began turning the event she had seen into some kind of nightmare, contorting memory into a belief that it was all a bad dream, the human mind working against the greater good. And that would be why, upon awakening, Petunia Dursley wouldn't realize that Death Eaters had moved in next door, and that Voldemort himself was taking of the youth of the neighborhood. The self-styled Dark Lord, well into his later years, was drinking upon the youth of Little Whinging. And in doing so, effectively increasing the power he held, and tipping the scales away from Dumbledore.

Sadly for him, what he didn't realize was, there was a 3rd side to the war, and the group was coming on the horizon, and things weren't looking bright for him, as the one prophesied to be in the final battle against him was, at the time, getting more powerful as well. More powerful, all thanks to him. Him, and a Demon named Phearamos…

-----

Harry had gotten a lot better with the handguns Baretta had given him in the 3 hours he practiced, but still not incredibly good and comfortable with the guns. He was, however, growing deeply comfortable using the Demon Sword that Kyoto had given him for his birthday. The weapon felt very right in his hands, and he didn't realize that he was practicing for as long as he was until the sun began to rise over the horizon. Harry slipped the sword back into its sheath as he heard sticks crunching behind him. He turned around, and had a split second to react, before he rolled backwards. Over his head shot two bullets, and struck the tree above him. Looking up as he pulled out the two handguns, he saw Baretta standing there, smirking.

"Good job kid." He walked over and looked to the boy, who was still holding the guns. He corrected the way that Harry was holding them, before holding up his own pistols. There was a line of some kind of golden writing that looked like hieroglyphs on one of his guns, and a line of similar hieroglyphs on the other, in black. "These are Isis and Osiris. I find that I have a better ability to connect with the guns, and use them if they have names. And at times, it can seem like they are alive."

"What kind of guns are these? I don't know anything about guns, but it would be nice to know what they were, so I can get some upgrades and stuff on them if need be." Harry inquired.

"They are custom weapons, I made the base designs, and took them to someone I know to get some mods done. The Demon helped, because some modifications had to be made by him, since Demons and Angels, despite being, at the basics very similar, aren't the same, and are a bit different. Meaning there are no other weapons like them in the world. In terms of power, one shot, and you can send a natural vampire to shit, and two can take out most lower powered Turns or Dhampires. The clips have a space-time flux that causes a distortion in time that therefore repeats the same basic space an infinite number of times based on an anomaly in anti-space that I created." At Harry's confused look, Baretta sighed. "Stupid fucking kids, what do they teach them in these schools? Basically I can put one bullet into anti-space, a pocket outside of space and time that I can create, and then manipulate time so that that one pocket of space is repeated an infinite number of times. In shorter words, I can put one bullet in, and make an infinite number of them."

Harry was gaping at Baretta by the end of his explanation. "So your homework assignment will be to name those guns. That, and draw faster. Any fucking halfwit of a vampire wouldn't have triggered that twig, and wouldn't have given you time to roll and draw. Be able to get those things into your hands the fastest way you can, always be ready to shoot. I don't care if you have to never put them down, and have that girl of yours hold you while you piss, that's on you, but be ready to shoot at any and all times." And with that, Baretta turned and left. Harry muttered obscenities after the man, but slipped the guns into the holsters and headed back toward where Blaise was.

However, as he headed back, he heard movement around him. He looked around for a moment, before he pulled out his guns and dropped low into a crouching walk, looking around as alert as he could be. He heard more movement before suddenly 2 figures burst from the trees. They both dropped, and from their paleness and their refines features, he knew what they were. Vampires.

They both looked at him for a long moment, and in that moment, Harry blasted with the gun at one several times, and he watched in shock as the figure dodged all of the shots. One rushed him, and rolling to the side, Harry slipped one gun back into the holster and pulled out one of the knives he had strapped to his forearm. He slashed out and caught the vampire in the stomach, before he did a leg-sweep. He jammed the knife into the heart of the downed vampire and shot it once in the head before he realized that the other one was there as well as he took a hard kick to the back.

He stumbled to the ground before he fought his way up, turning to face the vampire and firing. The vampire was too fast, and dodged all of the shots before it seemed to disappear completely with its speed. Harry ran in the same direction, before he ran up the side of a tree and leapt. He met the vampire in the air, and sent a feint of a kick before he landed a harsh punch to it face. Both landed, and the vampire, which seemed to be a female, wiped her mouth.

"So, someone who can actually put up a fight. Good, because I always loved it when my food squirmed before I ate it. I will feast well on you, young one, and I will then dine upon the young human girl I smell upon you."

Harry stared at the vampire, before he grew angry. He could feel the anger rising in him like a force that began in his sternum and spread everywhere. The vampire seemed to back away from him, staring in confusion, before she jumped at him. Harry was beginning to see the world darken, as he had the last time that Knight had taken over, and he pushed it back, and was just holding it back when the vampire was upon him. However, as she lashed out to grab him, his hands shot out as well, faster than hers. And suddenly Harry felt familiar feeling in him, of his Demonic energy. Only it felt different, less controlled.

And from his hands exploded the black and sky-blue energy, and he watched in horror as the vampire's arms literally exploded in fractures of bone, frozen blood, destroyed and burnt muscle, and a black fire that gave off a sub-zero cold. The vampire seemed too stunned to even scream, and she hadn't the chance, as bullets fired into the creature's head. Harry turned and saw Baretta standing there, holding a smoking gun. He walked over to Harry and looked down at him and backhanded him across the face.

The dam broke. And in a flash of movement, Harry had literally lifted the larger man up into the air and thrown him onto the ground and laid a strong punch to the man's jaw. "Never touch me again, you stupid bastard. Go back and lick Hir's boots, and leave the intelligent thinking and actions to those of us who were made for that purpose." The voice echoed, and before Baretta could move, which he seemed to not be trying to do regardless, he was lifted by the back of his shirt. Kyoto stood there, and looked at Harry. The boy had gone through the Awakening, and apparently had gained a whole new personality in the back of his mind.

"Who are you?"

"Ah…the one called Darkness. It's a shame Shadow isn't the dominant, you're but a bitch compared to him and even you know it. This journey could be so much easier and more fun if it was you and me, Shadow, I know you can hear me in there."

"Know your place, half-breed, I made you!" Kyoto shouted.

"See here, Locked, it is time you realize one thing. You might have released me…but I was always here, long before you…" And the voice seemed to fade, and suddenly Harry shook his head and looked around as if just waking up. He blinked for a moment, before turning and leaving the area, heading back to the clearing they were all camping out in.

"What is going on with the kid, Demon, tell me now or you will have 2 new holes to breathe through."

"He is who he is, regardless of what we do. It's some philosophical shit, I know, but that is all I can hear in my head, as if someone is telling me it. I remember when Shadow began to awaken, and the first outbreak lead to an entire race gone. At least with him, his first outbreaks have worked in no way against us. Be happy, and don't come to me like I am some kind of Demonic encyclopedia." And he turned and walked off as well.

Baretta growled low in his throat and headed to the clearing as well, looking down at the place where Harry had literally crippled the vampire with his bare hands. The grass and leaves under where his feet had been was burned and decaying, and the very earth seemed to have a whirlpooling effect, as if the ground under where he had been standing was steadily losing its consistency. "This kid is dangerous, Demon, and I do not like him. I hope you know what you are doing. I have no qualms with putting him down."

-----

They set out late into the night. No acromantula attacked at all, and that was a welcomed break to Harry. His mind was full of information he would never understand, broken images of what was once the "big picture", and puzzle pieces to different puzzles shuffled around inside of his conscious. Blaise took his hand, her left taking his right, and they walked. He could feel a kind of completion, like a circuit was being made as he held her left hand. She looked at him, and he knew she felt it as well.

According to Kyoto, they would be out of the forest by the dawning of the morning, and therefore back into civilization. He was right, but things were very interesting the moment they got into the town. Apparently the vampires had attacked the town before they had run into Harry, and the police were calling it a "gruesome, but textbook murder." The police were leaving out one detail. The reason for why the Paranormal Studies Division of Scotland Yard was there. And standing there in the front was Rose Brown. She looked around, observing any potential threat, but seeming not to be concerned, as it was daytime.

However, she caught sight of the party, and looked at Harry. The boy had released Blaise's hand as they had come out of the forest, and had instead opted to clinch and unclench his fists. He knew by the fact that even the streetlights were dripping blood, just how horrible the vampires had been.

Rose watched him as he looked around, and stared at the tall man with the white hair that her department had sent her looking for since their last confrontation. He was walking around wearing his usual black sunglasses, and looked as if he saw that type of thing daily. She strode purposefully toward him, and watched as he seemed to look at her, before turning to the man next to him. And she stopped in her tracks as she saw Baretta standing there. He motioned her over, and the two if them walked off to talk together.

Harry pulled Blaise toward him and hugged her for a moment, shielding her eyes from the bodies being carried out of the houses. He held her as she seemed to become slightly paralyzed by the sight, and shook her softly. However, he released her as he saw movement behind the building. She took his hand, as she had seen it as well at the last moment, and both of them rushed off toward it. Harry realized it was a hostile presence the moment they were close enough to see the figure. It was a small figure, but it wore the mask of a Death Eater.

Harry sped up and tackled the figure, and pulled back his fist to punch the figure in the face when he stopped and looked closely. The figure was, at the very most, a 9 year old. He pulled the mask back, and looked at the small child under him. It was a boy with blonde hair, ice blue eyes, and a bit chunky. However, there was something in they boy's eyes that had Harry hesitate for a moment. The boy's eyes were glazed over, and were darting around as if unable to focus on anything.

"Who…who are you?" he stammered. Harry looked at him for a moment, cocking his head to the side, and fell back on the ground and stared at the boy when he asked, "Who…who am I?"

Blaise walked over and looked at the boy, before squatting down and staring into his unfocused eyes. She spoke to him for a moment while Harry looked around, searching for any type of ambush. She walked over to him and told him what she figured had happened.

"It's a memory charm, too damn powerful, I don't know of anyone with memory charm ability like that. It seems like he was put under Imperius at some point, since he seems to have no knowledge of anything he had done, or why he was running when we caught him. He has serious internal bleeding, and there is a bite of some kind on his arm, its seriously mangled, we need to get him some help."

Harry looked for a moment before nodding. He walked over and lifted the boy up onto his back and walked back toward town. Kyoto looked at Harry quizzically, and Blaise pulled the tall white-haired man to the side and told him the situation, and Kyoto shrugged and started walking away. However, before he could get away, Rose appeared and ran over to him, grabbing his arm and pulling him away.

-----

"Look, I am sorry about all of that vampire stuff, but can you understand where I was coming from here?" She asked as they stood alone. He was looking around the trees and not at her, and it was irritating her. She reached up and grabbed his chin, and turned it toward her. He shook from her grasp and stared at her for a long moment, before he spoke.

"I assume you know a lot more about Shadow now, considering how antsy you are about being on my bad side. It's a good thing, but completely pointless at this point in time." He pulled out a cigarette and lit it before he clicked the lighter a few times. "Word of advice, if you have to concern yourself with these vampires, do _not_ get in our way. Do not try and stop us, and support us when we ask and only then. Vampires are the least of the world's worries at the moment, and with me, I have the only hope for the world, and also the only hope for our last hope. Understand that, and do nothing to fuck it up."

Rose stared at him for a moment, before he turned from her. "Get your people out of here if you want them to survive into the night. Get them out of here as fast as you can."

"My people are the highest trained in what they do, I assure you that…"

"This isn't a goddamned video game! There is no reset button when you die, I assure you. If you want your men making it through the night, get them out of here. I don't offer babysitting services, and with the amount of creatures coming through this night, that will be the only thing keeping them alive." He stopped talking for a moment and listened. "See, this is what the fuck happens when you talk and don't listen. We are surrounded. You won't make it out of here. Get as much weaponry as you have here, outfit your people with as much as you can, and if one of you is wounded, kill them. It will help in the long run."

"What are you talking about? Vampires don't come out in the middle of the day!"

"This is what happens when you watch too many damned old movies. They descended from fucking Angels, do you not see the flaw in thinking they would be scared of light or something? They are nocturnal, and very, very heliophobic as I call it, they lack the ability to be in the sun for any long period of time before they literally go up, and are very flammable, but think about it. We live in a world full of magic, someone was bound to make some fucking SPF 2000 or something." Rose looked around, before she pulled out her sidearm. Kyoto chuckled.

"Best thing you can do with that, is shoot yourself, otherwise, it won't do much. Realize, you are dealing with creatures fully able to dodge bullets. They won't be at the highest because it is day, but they are perfectly capable of making you miss." He looked down to her shoes, some spike stilettos that she very much liked and had saved up to get. "Take those damned things off." She shook her head. "Take them off and lose them. Follow me, and keep up because I'm not stopping." He cracked his knuckles and she saw his black fingernails shimmer in the sunlight for a slight moment, before he turned and started running. She kicked off the shoes and started after him.

She had only been running for a few yards when she almost lost sight of him. He was running on the ground when one of his feet rose and stepped to the side of a tree, and he used that leg to propel his body forward, and in midair he spun and hit a figure she hadn't even seen in the side of the head. He followed that spin kick by ending up near another tree, where he put his feet to the side of the trunk still a good 4 feet above the ground where he did a back flip, dropkicking another dark figure face-first into the tree trunk, where the figure's nose broke with a "pop" sound so loud it was almost a gunshot, and it sank to the earth, the bones making up the entire front of its face shattered and deformed.

Kyoto's flip landed him on the ground, where 2 of what Rose presumed to be vampires attacked him. Kyoto's hand shot out and punched into a particularly thin vampire's chest cavity, the breastbone cracking, and the vampire fell to the ground gasping, as its own bones closed in, stopping it from breathing. The second one met a different fate, as Kyoto grabbed it by the back of the head and brought its head down sharply to meet his rising knee, before he flung the vampire's head back, only for him to kick it at the joining of its legs, and Rose could literally hear the hip and groin bones breaking, before the vampire sank to the ground.

The entire fight took seconds, and then Kyoto was back to running toward the town. It had been a stupid idea of hers to have them so far from the town, but she wanted to get somewhere private to talk to him. She had spoken to Baretta, who had voiced, in very few words that were not curses in some language or another, that he didn't need her telling Kyoto it was him pushing her toward the Demon. Rose had intended to have him out there to apologize, ask for some help, and anything else that came to her mind. Kyoto wasn't her type, as he was thinner than she was and also a bit gothic for her tastes, but she could see how he appealed to her budding bisexual side, as he was incredibly androgynous-looking. She used that as reasoning for why, as she ran, she began to watch the way he moved and ran and fought with an increasing interest.

She saw for a fleeting moment, movement behind her, and she fired 3 shots. She smiled, seeing that she had, in fact, hit the vampire that was sneaking up on Kyoto twice in the head and once in the heart, but she stood, paralyzed as the creature stood, groggily, back up. However, before the vampire could retaliate, Kyoto was there, blocking the path from the bloodsucker to Rose. He kicked the vampire in the stomach so hard the creature's vertebrate shattered out from its back. Kyoto took off toward the edge of the forest, and she followed. Once out, she turned to him, caught between fear, shock, confusion and anger.

"What the hell is going on!" She shouted. From behind her emerged one form, and Kyoto pushed her to the side and engaged the creature, seeming to have fun as he did.

As Kyoto kicked the vampires head clear off, and it rolled down into foliage off to the side, he groaned lowly, before answering a little too cheerfully, "We're in for a long night. Strap up, and get ready, here comes the fun."

For some reason, Rose doubting the coming night would be very…"fun."

-----


	3. Chapter 2

**FFOmega**

Part II: Crimson Rain

Chapter 2

The Paranormal Studies Special Ops Unit was revered among those that knew of its existence as one of the most feared Divisions under the military control of the Scotland Yard. They were the best at what they did.

Get in.

Get it done.

And Get the fuck on before anyone knew they were there.

They were the reason that the mass populace rarely had any proof outside of folklore of such things as vampires, werewolves, merpeople, and other such creatures.

They were used to paranormal creatures, taking them out and getting out before anything was left to chance, and before anyone was able to see. But that was very few in number.

Not over 2 hundred vampires.

But by all accounts, there shouldn't have been that many vampires in the near area. They couldn't have simply come from nowhere. Unless their numbers had swollen suddenly and without anyone realizing it at all.

Rose Brown stood in the center of the town square, looking out into the forest. She had gotten rid of her business suit in exchange for some better clothing for the night ahead, and her men had all prepped. The man known as Baretta was doing something incredibly interesting, in raiding the back of the transit unit that the unit used, throwing weapons out into the middle of the square, seeming to make 2 piles of some kind.

The woman with the long hair, Lulu, was sitting in a meditative position, her scythes in front of her, and a bullwhip wrapped in a circle around her. Her eyes were closed, and she looked very edgy as a dark magic of some kind danced around her.

She locked eyes with Harry from across the cobblestone street. His eyes were haunted, and his hands jammed into his pockets in an almost defiant gesture. Blaise was checking on the small boy sitting there on the ground rocking himself back and forth as if in some kind of trauma. Harry, on the other hand, looked very little like the doting boyfriend or the concerned savior at the time, but looked much closer to someone lost in their own thoughts. And his thoughts, by the look on his face, was one place she wanted to be even less than a small village surrounded by hundreds of vampires as dusk began to approach.

She would never know exactly how little she would want to be him by the end of the night.

-----

The sun was retreating, and as it did, the cloud cover was causing it to be much darker than it should have been. The dusk light was stretching shadows out to make even the smallest of roaming cats look like lions wandering the streets in the dark of the night. The street lights were the first to go, and Harry was the first to notice.

He was standing to the side of a building, fiddling with one of the knives that Blaise had given him, his forearm blades as he called them, when there was movement, and the first light at the end of the street went out. He looked down the street, before he looked down at his hand and continued to mess with his nails, picking at the underside of them. When the second light went out, he made even less of a move to do anything. Two of the Paranormal Ops soldiers were stationed in a house across from him, their rifles trained. They were watching him, and were given strict orders to not do anything until he did. However, one of the men began to grown antsy as the lights steadily went out. They couldn't see what was going on 5 feet down the road, the only light left was right next to Harry.

As the last light went out, and all was silent for a moment, the Operative was growing edgy and was reaching for his light. Finally, he flicked it on, and the flashlight clicked on and the white light shone brightly. Pinned to the wall was a vampire, a knife through its neck, and Harry stood, in the middle of picking at his nails again with another knife when the light came on.

He stared blankly at the source of the light before a look of complete and utter shock slid across his face. Shock at the complete idiocy of the person who was illuminating him. The light turned, and down the street, they could make out a huge mass of vampires making their way up the street, screaming and shouting in rage, rushing toward the light. Harry's eyes narrowed and suddenly, with a flick of his wrist, the knife shattered the flashlight atop the automatic weapon.

"Idiot!" Harry literally growled out, before there was the sound of metal scratching along something hard, and then there was a flash of reflected light, as whatever the metal object was drew a flash of moonlight, and then there was nothing but the sound of screaming figures and bodies hitting the ground.

It was within 3 minutes of complete nightfall, that the first gunshots rang out. They were rapid, loud, powerful, and much too close to make anyone feel comfortably safe.

And from there, over the next many hours the town was steadily buried under dead bodies, dust, drawn blood, and bullet shells.

-----

Blaise had been watching the small boy that they had captured earlier in the day for a long time. His eyes were a hazel color, but something about the night light was making them look much closer to an amber, but she was sure it was simply a trick of the light.

She was positioned with Lulu to watch the residents of the town, and had grown tired of Lulu's complaints about it being sexist. She knew it was because Blaise herself wasn't trained to kill mass numbers, and Lulu's skills were, however they took much too long to cast to make it conceivable to have her out against enemies that were faster than either of them could dream to be.

Blaise would catch glimpses of Harry, and long to help out, but she knew it was imperative to not give away their positions. The fact that there were 3 people out there fighting and drawing the battle to them that were more than human was the only thing keeping the vampires away from where they were.

Sliding down the wall, Blaise's eyes surveyed the area. She saw the fear in the townspeople's eyes as they sat, huddled together, and the restlessness in Lulu as she practiced her casting. Looking over to the far corner, Blaise looked at the small boy. He had told her that his name was Sam, not Sammy, not Samuel, just Sam, which was odd because when they had found him, he didn't know who he was. He was a bit round when they first came into contact with him but, oddly enough, he seemed to have dropped weight during the few hours to the point that he seemed fairly thin.

Suddenly, light filtered through the window above her head and illuminated the face of Sam as he sat on the floor before her. And the moonlight seemed to ricochet through his yellow diamond-like eyes, refracting flashes of light everywhere. And suddenly the light was gone, as a body blocked the light. It was a vampire, its body standing by the window, peering inside at all of the people within. Licking its lips at its newfound buffet, it grinned darkly. And its shadow was all but blocking out the existence of Sam in the shadows. However, suddenly there was a pair of bright golden lights shining from the darkness. And just as quickly, a figure launched forward, and the window above her exploded, and in a rain of glass, the shadow the vampire that had cast the shadow was gone. And in the light shining through, Blaise realized that Sam was gone.

The night air was shaken by a loud howl. And somehow, suddenly, the howl seemed to break the overhead clouds, and just as quickly, the rain seemed to fall in buckets. And Lulu, who hadn't been paying too much attention, lifted her head and sniffed for a moment, before muttering, "Why does it smell like wet dog?"

-----

Kyoto's movements were cold and calculated as the rain broke overhead. He wasn't fast by any means in rushing toward enemies, instead, he tended to make slow movements that seemed to display a semblance of power that no one on earth should have been able to place into single movements.

One side-kick that shattered the breastbone into crushing the heart through the lungs, effectively drowning the victim in its own blood in seconds.

A roundhouse that lifted the vampire's body from the ground, flipping it into an unintentional half-cartwheel, where the side of its neck met the ground at an angle that no muscle or bone in the neck was strong enough to stop the impact from shattering everything within the passageway.

A dropkick that sent one particularly pugnacious opponent through the air, where he was impaled straight down a 4 foot long tree branch through the sternum, where he hung, unable to move, for the minute it took him to completely die, and by then 3 others had been strung along the same branch.

Lighting a cigarette while completely immobile, Kyoto was still in the process of lighting it when a vampire ran full speed, head first, at him. Raising his leg in a movement that was all too bored, his straight leg met the lowered head of the vampire who was, charging full speed ahead moments before. And the second the vampire hit his booted foot, his entire vertebrate cracked in on itself, and he came to a very ungraceful stop in a heap on the ground in front of Kyoto. Using the same foot, he kicked the crumpled body forward, hitting 3 more charging vampires.

Taking a drag from the cigarette, he heard a gust of wind, and felt a presence near him. It was Harry, and he had leapt from a street lamp and had taken out a vampire that Kyoto would have handled easily, but was occupied with his smoking. In Harry's hand, he was holding a bottle of gin. "What's that for?"

"Hey, its gonna be a long night. That, and I have found that it burns when it gets in their eyes. Besides, I found one of those stupid ass Ops drinking the shit. No point having a drunk sniper." Kyoto nodded, before he grabbed the bottle.

"Hold this." The vampires were all in front of them, looking antsy as Harry backed into a simple boxing stance, while Kyoto pulled his cigarette from his mouth and handed it to Harry. "I heard a saying once, 'Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day'…" Kyoto dug in his pocket and pulled out his lighter, clicking it open and shut a few times. "…'But set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.' Always loved that saying." He took a quick drink from the gin, then he held the lighter up, and blew the liquor out, effectively making a fireball in the air, igniting some of the vampires that had rushed toward him. "It's so damned true."

Harry chuckled and handed back the cigarette just before he punched a vampire in the face, collapsing the creature's nose in on itself. He followed that by jumping in the air and spinning, kicking the vampire in the upper chest, where his clavicle shattered and cut through its windpipe.

Turning to Kyoto to look back for one fleeting moment, he halted in his words before they could even leave his mouth, as he heard a scream. It was Blaise's voice, and then there was the sound of a feral growl following it. Suddenly there was the sound of metal scratching against hard material as Harry drew his sword, and then he was gone.

Kyoto looked around to the vampires around him, and one vampire suddenly rushed him. He laughed as he threw the gin bottle directly at the vampire before leaping in the air and using the vampire's shoulders as a springboard. He lit the flammable vampire aflame and then jumped away, as that vampire served to burn all of the others around him out of existence.

-----

Cleo Abbott hated her sister. She actually hated Hannah so much that they literally had to alter the girl's schedule to the point that she had to be across the school from her older sibling at all times to not attempt to kill her. Since Harry had left, Cleo had literally tried 17 times to do just that, and had succeeded in cutting over 4 inches from Hannah's hair as the girl was pushed out of the way by Susan. Those 4 inches could have been the girl's throat, and Hannah had broken down in tears as her sister was carried away, cursing at the girl in language that literally made Seamus cringe.

Cleo herself often sat up late nights, just looking out of the window, staring down on the grounds hoping that Harry might just come strolling back to the school. Lavender made a comment at some point that the actions were much too awkward for an eleven year old, and often times, Cleo would wonder about that herself, and often times it would bring tears to her eyes.

Cleo Abbott wasn't your normal eleven year old. Outside of the obvious, there was one particular reason she wasn't like the other eleven year olds in her year. That was because Cleo wasn't eleven. She was twelve. And she was to turn 13 in the next few months. It would really depress the girl, as she realized that her stay with Ace had caused her to be unable to go to Hogwarts. Unspeakables were not locatable by owls, meaning she missed her first Hogwarts letter. The last summer, Ace had decided to take her out on a "fun day" as he called it, but really meant some outside time away from the house before they headed back and he would sing her _The Song_. But that day, the owl had found her, and she had responded before he could know.

Cleo's eyes drifted off to the forest line, and she looked out in the darkness. She knew something was going on just across the forest line, she could feel it inside of her. And she knew Harry and Blaise had to be there. Cleo sighed to herself, she deeply missed the two and deeply wanted them back, or wanted to be where they were. "Harry…wherever you are…please be safe."

-----

The moonlit main street yielded two forms. The Ops stationed atop the houses with their sniper rifles had steadily been taken out, and the last remaining stood next to his commander, with the sniper rifle strapped to his back, and naught but his automatic rifle in his hands. Rose was holding her two handguns, with a riot shotgun on her back, and her eyes darting about. She had already been mobbed, and the spread-shot of the shotgun had been her salvation. But she was running low on ammunition, and sunrise was some time away.

The sound of displaced air and heavy rainfall in one place heralded the appearance of one more of the vampires. Standing at the end of the street, the large form stood, cracking its fingernails. Rose's breath caught as she recognized the battle armor the creature wore. It was one of her men. And no matter the power of her handguns, or how close, from that distance, she wouldn't be doing any type of significant damage, and by the time he was close enough to make the riot shotgun work, it would be too late.

They had been standing in the middle of the street, and as the last remaining sniper turned, they realized they were being closed in. At the opposite end of the street was yet another vampire. Suddenly, as the vampires seemed to be about to attack, there was the sound of shingles falling to the ground, and Rose turned, watching as the duster-clad form of Baretta leapt from the roof of the nearby store and landed in a crouch. The vampire from the opposite end of the street, the one that wasn't an ex-member of Rose's troop, rushed forward as Baretta stood. The darkness loomed as the figure was blasting toward them, and with a flash of lightning, a gun was in Baretta's hand. It was a shimmering chrome number, the one Rose had seen glinting beautifully atop the table the first time she had met the man.

And suddenly the vampire's head was caught in Baretta's hand, its head held back by the man's hand atop his head. And he lifted the vampire and spun him around in the air by his head so he was facing the vampire that was once a Paranormal Studies Special Op. And into the vampire's mouth the gun barrel went, and as the vampire tried to clamp its jaw shut on the barrel, its teeth splintered and shattered. And all at once, 3 things happened. The lightning over head flashed, the Ex-Op vampire began to charge forward, automatic rifle blazing, and the nonplussed form of Baretta pulled the trigger once.

The thunder drowned out all of the automatic gunfire from the rifle, but one thing sounded out just seconds after, and nearly as loud. Baretta's single bullet. Rose watched in shock as the bullet ripped through the vampire's skull, fired forward, and ripped into and through the harsh barrier of the body armor, shattering it, and the vampire launched back a foot in the air and back onto the ground. And in Baretta's hand was nothing but tattered remains of a head, as the vampire Baretta had been holding sank to the ground, nothing left of anything above the neck save the base of the mandible and a collapsed windpipe.

Turning around, Baretta slipped the gun back into the holster, before he pushed back his duster, which floated behind him for but a moment, and his hands went to his back, and suddenly he spun on the toe of the right military issue boot he wore, bringing his left leg up, before he slammed his left foot down on the ground, stopping his spin as he spun only 45 degrees so he was facing the building he had just leapt from, before he took off running to the side, as he held two SMGs, firing the guns with such speed that the gunshots never seemed to have any apparent end, seeming almost like one long gunshot.

Atop the roof was a dark form that Baretta began to unload at the figure moving inhumanly quick and quiet, the shots missing his fast movements, never once disturbing any of the shingles atop the roofs. "Uh…ma'am…Operative Reed requesting permission to speak freely?" The operative asked uncertainly, as both he and Rose stared after the retreating form of Baretta, chasing after the rooftop running vampire.

"…Granted…"

"Uh…what in the bloody hell was that?"

"I don't know, Reed, I do not know…"

-----

Blaise's screams ended the same way they began, with the shattering of glass. Her screaming began as a vampire shot through the window next to the one that the boy, Sam, had disappeared from. And it ended as Harry broke through the last remaining window and purged the room of anything non-human in seconds. But something was different. Blaise felt it the exact moment that he saw her pressed against the wall by the vampire. It passed through his eyes, and suddenly she couldn't see his eyes anymore. And in seconds, the vampire was seemingly in ribbons at her feet, and his sword was dripping with the dark blood of the creature. And his hand was cracking as he set and cracked the bones in his fingers repeatedly.

"Do. Not. Touch. Her." Harry seemed to speak, while poking the clearly dead vampire with the sword to accentuate and further punctuate each word. "Understand?" He seemed to ask the dead body. "Good boy, now you can go, as long as you don't do it again." He spoke darkly, before he kicked the destroyed creature, and turned away from them.

"Harry…"

"Knight, sweetheart, I'm Knight. Harry is indisposed at the moment, and I am trying my damnedest to make sure he and you survive. Everyone else, they can go to hell."

"So…you're Knight…not Harry?" Knight nodded to Blaise's question. "And the difference between you two is…?"

"Not as much as you would think, babe, and not nearly enough." He muttered to her, before one finger eased to the bottom of her jaw and was used to lift her face up toward his. "Gaby, not nearly enough, I am so sorry to say." And he traced a ghost of a kiss to her lips before he was completely gone from the room. And as she allowed her eyes to flutter open, she saw through the window as Knight ran behind a vampire and did a kind of punt kick that sent the creature into the air, before he cut the figure straight in half with the sword.

" 'Not as much as you think' he says. That's a lie, and we both know it. Something is going on…" Blaise muttered before she took a deep breath. "**_Kyoto! Bring your sorry ass here, Now!_**"

-----

The moon overhead was causing the raindrops to reflect the silver light above, and the almost seemed like the sky was crying mercury. The cold of the night bit the humans in the town to the bone, but there was one form that was completely unaffected by the cold. Standing hunched low on two legs in such a way as to make it seem like the figure would fall to all fours at any moment, was Sam. But it wasn't the small, timid, round boy that had met the two older teenagers earlier that night. No, this was someone else entirely. Something else.

A howl pierced the night like a blade through human flesh, but was cut short by the sound of something heavy hitting the earth. Turning, Sam looked before him, and there was a vampire. Pale-skinned, dark-eyed, and glaring down the road at him. An animosity welled up in Sam that seemed so natural and instinctual that he didn't question it. Shaking his fur and glancing up to the moon one last time, as if looking to a lover before walking away from her, a longing last look, before he dropped down to all fours and bounded forward, the light seemingly trailing its finger down his vertebrate as he bounded forward, leaving a trail of lighter fur there, and all too fast, he was upon the vampire.

And with a fast motion, he had overshot the vampire, holding a section of the creature's throat in his mouth. Spitting it out, he sat back onto two legs before leaping forward, a huge paw making contact with the vampire's head, the force literally knocking the head off of the partially severed neck, and rolling across the ground. Sam turned and bounded off from the scene.

Perched atop a nearby roof was a form that seemed to be warping the world around his very form. He was tall, thin, with glowing, ice gray eyes. Spiked upward red hair framed his face, but there was a thin ponytail coming from the back of his head that was over his shoulder and down to his waist. His arms were crossed, and he wore armor that looked like someone had literally burned and tainted gold. His eyes looked to the scene beneath him, before he felt a presence pulling to him. He turned and without even bending his legs, he was gone up into the air, arms still crossed.

-----

Blades in wartime were designed with the idea of having somewhere for the blood to go from the blade, while other blades simply had a coat on them that allowed the blood to roll off of it. However, that was not an issue for the one calling himself Knight at the time, because he was moving much too fast to worry about blood slowly drifting and draining from his blade. Cutting vampires in half at the waist, while decapitating others, and even running 2 through at once, before simply shaking the blade, causing them to be ripped from his blade. However, suddenly he felt a pulling feeling inside of him. He slipped the blade back into the scabbard on his back, and the guns were in his hands, where he blew a hole through the head of the vampire running toward him.

Looking through the hole, there was a figure standing at the other end of the street. Tall, with deep, blood red hair spiked up. His stone gray eyes locked on Knight through the hole, before Knight kicked the oddly still standing vampire in a simple gesture, sending the body to the side, moving the only obstruction between him and the figure. Uncrossing his arms, the figure revealed his hands. The gloves he wore were huge, to the point that the figure's hands, which were in fists at his side, where about two-thirds of the size of the man's head. The gloves were a bright reddish-golden color with black accents, and absolutely huge.

"So, Demon, you seem to have found your way here the one time we make this raid. Interesting timing if I do say so myself. But I must ask, who are you?" However, before he could even find out, there was a string of gunshots interrupting his speech, and in a circle around his head on the wall behind him was an outline of bullet holes outlining his head.

"Don't waste my time, you sorry leech. Give me a reason, and you will be laying here dead, like your brethren. Get in my way, and I will have that reason. Move on from here, lest I paint my masterpiece upon this earth using your tainted blood." And then Knight had turned from him.

"Do **not** turn your back on me, Demon scum!"

"Shut the fuck up. Now." Came Knight's reply, before there were 3 gunshots. 2 were blocked by the man's gauntlet-like gloves, but the third hit the mark. Right in the middle of his forehead. Falling back onto the ground, the figure seemed to almost be asleep or unconscious more than dead. Walking toward him, Knight kneeled down near him, and peered at him. "When you wake up, remember this. Tell your master I am coming for him. Tell that sick bastard that he started this war, and I will finish it. My name is Knight, and it would be best for him, and furthermore the rest of the living world that I not be made angry, as I have the tendency to…shoot first, and not give a shit about asking questions. Come looking for Harry Potter, and I won't be very happy, so back up and stay backed if you want to see the end of this."

And turning away, Knight stalked off.

-----

The sun was inching its way up the sky, and as the rays fell on the small town, there was little that wasn't cast in a crimson haze. The night was ending, and more lives had ended that night than anyone would have the capacity to know the names of the dead, no matter how many times they tried. It had gotten to the point that it was easier to identify who was dead by counting the people left than the people gone. Body parts were strung about the town, dead bodies littered about, intestines and other innards strung about the town like sick, demented Christmas decorations, and so much blood had sank into the cobblestone streets that the grout would probably forever be stained red, and it was like walking along a street made of ruby bricks.

And perched atop the last standing streetlight was a dark figure, white hair fluttering out behind him like a reminder of the world before that night, still stark white despite everything that had gone on. His entire body language gave off a distant appearance, and in his hand dangled the severed arm of someone, blood drops few and far between at that point. Leaning against the side of the street lamp was the duster-clad form of Baretta. He was leaning, and his gun was trained on the door, as the last surviving members of the town filed out slowly. Blaise's eyes darted about, searching for the one person she needed to see, but she saw nothing. Nothing but the barrel of Baretta's gun focus on her for just a moment too long, before he put it back in its holster, then using his shoulder, pushed himself from his leaning position on the lamp up to an upright stance. Kyoto seemed to almost fall from the lamp headfirst, causing the people in the town to gasp and scream, before, at the last second, he flipped over and landed on his feet, without even bending his knees, looking as if he was always on the ground.

Kyoto whistled out one loud, shrill note, and suddenly the ground shook. To the side, they all watched as a house literally seemed to shift to the side, right off of its foundation, before collapsing out into the street. In the debris, there was the sound of a loud crashing, and suddenly a form shot out from the rubble and into one of the broken streetlamps that, despite not working, was still standing. Bending the post to an awkward angle, the figure seemed to roll out of this predicament just to leap back up. Hulking and covered in fur, the creature growled a low, feral sound out, before suddenly a dark blur shot from the rubble.

Taking a punch to the face, what could only be a werewolf flipped over, only to lash out with a paw, but the dark figure dodged to the side and laid a kick to the side of the right leg of the creature, and the shattering of the bone was literally audible, to the point that it almost sounded like someone had taken a sledgehammer to a sheet of crystal.

And suddenly it was clear who the dark figure was. It was Harry, or more precisely, Knight. And with a smirk that seemed to be so many different levels of wrong all at once, he grabbed the werewolf around the neck. And as the sun came up the horizon, the changes began to reverse, and the wolf seemed to steadily fade back into the boy that he was before the night began.

"Harry, wait, he's just a boy! Don't kill him, its murder!" shouted Blaise, but she was stopped from running to Harry by Baretta's arm, which came out before her, holding his gun in hand, and Kyoto arm, holding…the severed arm he had been holding. Blaise recoiled if for no other reason than to not be near the arm.

"No, Blaise, he is a dog. And you know what happens to a dog when it has gone rabid and is a danger to everyone it is near? It is put down. And that's what I am doing." And suddenly there was a groan from the boy as he slowly awoke, before he began looking around in confusion.

"What's going on here? Where am I? Someone…help…please!" The boy shouted, but before he could utter another word, there was a fast twist of his hands, and his body slumped to the ground. At that moment, Blaise snapped, and charged forward toward Harry.

"You bastard!" She shouted at him, but as she pulled her hand back to slap him, he put his hand up and forward to stop her. His head was down and away from her, and there was some kind of aura about him.

"Do not come near me if you wish to live. I am not your Harry, and though I do have his feelings for you inside me, and they will keep me from cutting you down right now, they won't prevent me slapping the holy hell out of you. Now is not the time." The echoing, dark voice of Knight rang out and echoed down the silent street. And suddenly Knight leapt backwards, just in time to dodge a figure that had landed where he was, fist first, and shattered the pavement, large gauntleted fist buried in the stone past the wrist.

Landing a good 10 feet from where he had been, Knight looked at the form in front of him. It was the man he had shot before, a scene that only he and the other man knew of. Cocking his head to the side, Knight looked at the man. "Do you have something to prove by dying or something you foolish vampire? Then again, foolishness was always tied closely to courage…just say what you have to say and get out of here."

"Do not disrespect me, Demon, do not make that mistake ever again. I am your better, and you would do well to remember, for I will be coming for you. And do not think you will be able to hide behind that dark haze that you are in now. Soon I will catch you as you are. And you will not survive."

"Oh get stuffed, you stupid bastard. Regardless of what…'haze' you catch me under, you won't be leaving alive. Now bugger off before I decide to shoot you in the head. Again."

The figure glared at Knight, and was getting ready to walk toward him when he was slapped on the side of his head. Spinning around, he saw Kyoto walking by him, swinging the severed arm in his hand, which he had just slapped the man in the head with. Growling low in his throat, he crossed his arms, and glared at them all, before a blur marked his departure.

Knight cracked the knuckles in his hands, before nodding toward them all, and there seemed to be an energy coming from him, and when he looked up again, bright green eyes shone brightly. It was Harry again, and he was looking around him as if he was lost. But he wasn't. "Tell me I didn't do what I think I did."

"Well, kid, you did. But that's not even the most shocking thing. This is." And he held up the arm in front of them all and turned the arm to face them. There, on the inside of the pale, vampire arm, was something they all knew.

The Dark Mark.

-----

"Young Miss Abbott, I think that it would definitely be in your best interest to not be staring out of the window all night, and get to sleep, because I do not care for you sleeping through my class." Cleo hated the 1st year Defense class, nothing was learned in the class, there was nothing taught there that made her feel like she would be able to go and help Harry and Blaise, and she felt like she needed to learn something more than ways to ward off angry kneazles and how to cast a Knockback jinx.

She liked the Defense teachers, she really did, and Ms. Madison was very supportive of Cleo's distress in the week since Harry and Blaise had left, but her support didn't change the fact that the girl felt like she wasn't learning anything of use. Bella had turned in on herself, and hadn't much time for Cleo as she seemed to debate her every action, wanting to ensure she did nothing that would give her away. This left the girl to her own devices, which had turned from energetic and slightly annoying, to borderline suspicious to anyone who was watching her. She stayed up all night, staring out of the window or reading some book or another that few had ever heard of.

"1000 and 1 Ways to Kill a Pureblood? What are you doing reading that book, young lady?" Dumbledore had asked her one night when he appeared out of nowhere. It seemed that he had been doing that a lot to the people that had stood by Harry in the Great Hall the day he disappeared.

"Because I want to know how to kill a pureblood. Do you have a problem with that…sir?" Cleo had quipped back, and before she could receive her answer, she marked her page with the picture of she and Harry asleep on the couch, stood from her place, and walked away from the man. She didn't like him, he reminded her too much of her brother. Any means necessary to get to the needed end. People mattered, if for any reason than that their willing support to help you get to where you need to go was easier than forcing them.

And she liked him even less after the confrontation with Harry. However, there was one undeniable fact. At Hogwarts, he had all of the power, all of the control, which meant that he had control over her.

Once more staring out of the window as she practiced the wand movement for a very interesting spell she had read about, Cleo muttered to herself, "I seriously need to look into a transfer."

-----


	4. Chapter 3

**FFOmega**

Part II: Crimson Rain

Chapter 3

It had been 3 months since the journey began, and Blaise Zabini was in no mood to talk to anyone as she sat on the steps to a large business complex, cigarette balanced precariously on the filter, sitting on the step next to her, burning slowly. Her eyes were closed, while her hair drifted behind her in the soft wind, her fingernails drumming on the stone steps to a steady rhythm. "You have about another minute before I call in the police. Tell me why you were here!"

The security guard was actually unlike the stereotype, as he stood tall with a bald head and a muscular shape. He had his flashlight trained on the cigarette, which he was using as a timer for how long Blaise had to answer his question. He would look from the cigarette back to observing her body every few seconds. His eyes traveled up her toned legs, which were on full display, hidden very little by the slightly faded red plaid short skirt she wore, but Blaise didn't even seem to notice. She seemed to be staring up at the moonlit sky, not even paying attention as the man seemed to subconsciously inch his hand toward her leg. However, right before he could touch her, her head turned from gazing at the sky and her mahogany eyes locked on him. "He's not going to like that."

"He?" The security guard asked in confusion. "Who is 'he'?" All Blaise did was smirk and point up, and suddenly the cigarette, which was almost burned out, was crushed into the ground as a boot landed right on top of it.

"I think she is talking about me, and she is right, I wouldn't like you touching her." The security guard's eyes darted upwards, and found a pair of shimmering, powerfully bright green eyes watching him. "So move your hand, or lose it."

The security guard didn't have to be asked twice, as he spun around and ran off from the scene. Harry sat down on the step above Blaise and looked at her for a moment. "What's with the outfit?"

"Jumped a girl heading to school, took her clothes. That, and it was laundry day." She replied cheekily. Harry rolled his eyes before he slipped his hand through her hair. She turned around and jumped on him, and they kissed for but a moment. Both heard the sound of someone approaching, and Blaise slipped her hand to the holster on the side of his waist, as his hand went to the holster of the other gun on the other side, and, looking directly into each other's eyes, Blaise turned as Harry pulled the gun his hand was on out, and they both aimed the guns at whoever was behind Blaise.

"Jumpy…good…constant vigilance and such." Harry had not seen the man that stood before him since the end of the previous year, and his sudden appearance unnerved the boy. "Don't ask why we know where you are…Dumbledore has had you under surveillance for some times now. And if you…" But before Moody could get the rest of what he had to say out, Blaise had jumped onto Harry, her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, and Harry had looked to Moody for a fleeting moment before, with a bit of a crouch and the sound of air being displaced by his leap, they were gone.

-----

Kyoto hated the rain this time of year in his current location for a very specific reason. If the humidity wasn't bad enough, the rain was worse, and the mass amount of water in the air mixed with the heat was screwing with his hair. Frizzy hair was something he did not do and would refuse to deal with any longer than necessary.

Summer in Australia was pushing his mental limits, and the dam was about to break.

He hated Australia.

He hated Australians.

It wasn't so much a hate for the people as a whole, but he had once been born as the child to two criminals left in Australia when it was still a Penal Colony to "Great Britain." He and large quantities of sand, fit about as well as a square peg in a round hole.

The place gave him a migraine, and he had literally let himself be killed if for no other reason than to never have to go back to the continent. And here he was, sitting outside of a bar, dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt and long black pants, the rain pouring down on him.

"Hey there…" He didn't turn to look at her, but pulled out a pocket mirror, much like a female compact, only without the powder inside. It almost looked like it had all been used. He used the mirror to look behind him, catching sight of the woman behind him. Her eyes were bright, her hair matted, and her shirt so soaked to transparency it might as well have not been there. His eyes drank in the sight before he locked eyes with the hunting rifle she held in her hands. She was shaking, and it couldn't have been from cold as it was pushing the triple digits in heat.

He didn't speak, and didn't even turn to look at her, folding the compact-like mirror and placing it into one of the pockets in his pants. She was shaking, he could almost feel it in the ground, but she still worked up the ability to stammer out the same two words she spoke the first time she spoke, only this time, she raised the weapon unsteadily and aimed it at his back. The barrel was truthfully about 5 inches to his left, but for any other person, it would be close enough to at least make a normal human a bit nervous. But Kyoto was notorious for not being a normal person.

Or human.

He turned around slowly, his motions incredibly, almost painfully slow, before flashing her a bright smile. "G'day."

She stared at him before rolling her eyes. "We don't really say that, you know."

"Yes, I know. I lived here once…long ago…" He smiled slightly, before looking at her more directly behind his sunglasses, as was clear by the incline of his head more facing her. "Mind lowering the gun, or do you still want to put a hole say…half a foot to my left." She grinned sardonically before nodding solemnly. She turned the gun so it was really pointing at him.

"Better?"

"Much."

"Interesting. You have 7 seconds to tell me why you are here, and who you are."

"7?"

"Yes."

"Weird number to just pull out of your ass. Why not something exciting like…10. Or if you want to be a boring ass, 3."

"You're at 4 by now."

"I'd roll my eyes, but you wouldn't be able to see it."

"Then take the glasses off, idiot."

"Wouldn't make any difference." He was silent for a moment, before turning all the way to her, and then reaching up to his sunglasses and pulled them off, before peering directly at her. "If I were you, I'd leave. Now. It's not safe for you to be here right now unless you want to die."

"I don't think I'm the one who has to worry about death here, I'm the one with the gun." She spoke after a pause, obviously unnerved by the sight of his eyes.

"I'm serious. Go." He narrowed his eyes at her, before standing and snatching the gun from her trembling hands, and then grabbing her by the back of her shirt and lifting her up and over the bar counter easily, then dropping her there and dropping the rifle down next to her. And as soon as that was done, the door flew open and in walked a huge tower of a man, muscular with a long goatee that was in a braid down to the middle of his stomach. His head was shaved bald beneath the fedora he wore.

"Hmm…I apologize for my tardiness. Now, let's get to this 'death' thing, shall we?" The man spoke in a smooth voice, before pulling out a pair of metal tomahawks.

"Sounds good, and don't worry about the lateness, it let me get a drink in." Kyoto replied. "I'm Kyoto, by the way."

"Nice to meet ya. I'm called Bear."

"Ouch…irony."

"Yeah. Speaking of Irony…I've met her before, wonder what happened to her. Pretty psychotic, though last time I saw her, she was…a circus acrobat?" Bear seemed to be muttering to himself.

"Nah, clown. She loved to make the kids happy, ironically…haha, she was a very interesting woman, and it took me 10 years before she even gave me the time of day." Kyoto mused with a soft ghost of a smile on his face. "Well, let's get on with this so we can both go about our business."

Dropping back into a fighting stance, Kyoto watched the figure in front of him. Bear raised one of his tomahawks and launched it forward quickly. Kyoto dodged it to the side as he moved toward his opponent. Bear tossed his second tomahawk in a horizontal spin toward Kyoto. Doing a baseball slide under the spinning axe, Kyoto looked to kick the larger man in the leg, but his kick was side stepped. Sliding past Bear, Kyoto grabbed one of the man's thick legs, and used that to shift his momentum, going from sliding across the floor to flipping up and laying a double-footed kick to the top of the man's back. Bear stumbled forward, and Kyoto took that opportunity to follow up with a kick to the side of the thigh, and a punch to the middle of his spine. Bear spun around and backhanded Kyoto in the face, sending the white-haired man spiraling toward a far wall.

Twisting in the air, he placed his feet out toward the wall, using that to set himself, before he pushed off of the wall again, diving back toward Bear. The larger man had grabbed his tomahawks and launched one toward Kyoto's incoming form. Adjusting mid-air, Kyoto flipped over the incoming axe and caught it in his hands, before ducking the next one and flinging it at Bear.

Ducking out of the way, Bear charged Kyoto full speed. Jumping, Kyoto laid a snapping kick to the large man's jaw, sending him spiraling into the side of the large wooden bar the white-haired man had been sitting at moments before. Bear stood groggily with his jaw at an unnatural angle, to find Kyoto seemingly having a lot of fun hanging onto the ceiling fan as it spun him slowly around. Placing a foot on the wall, he jumped from the fan toward Bear, before flipping in the air to kick the man in the face.

Bear dodged to the side, but Kyoto grabbed him by the neck as he went by, using the large man's body to change his direction, causing him to shoot up over Bear's head. And coming down, his boots slammed into the top of the man's shoulder, leading to him being crushed into the ground with a snapping of bones. And with a sad smile, he snapped the man's neck.

Reaching over the counter, he grabbed one of the bottle of rum and walked out of the bar sipping it, while at the same time lighting a cigarette, smoking a drag every time he wasn't drinking from the bottle.

-----

Baretta was in the one place he never wanted to be in his life. A Karaoke bar in south Tokyo. He wished he could have worn earmuffs, it was truly a horrific sound, that which was karaoke, and it took all of his restraint not to shoot every person who thought about touching the microphone on the stage that evening. The only thing that would tide him over was the knowledge that, before the night was over, someone, or some_ones_, would be receiving a quite thorough ass-kicking at his hands.

Sitting at the bar, he was immediately approached by the barkeeper. However, he reached into his jacket and pulled out his own flask. The bartender turned after nodding, and went back to cleaning glasses while actually bobbing his head to the god-awful screeching sound coming from the small girl singing some old 80's song while shaking her pink-and-green-streaked hair around enthusiastically, further causing her voice to sound even worse.

Baretta lowered his head to the bar table and thumped it on the hardwood surface a few times before finally screwing the cap on his flask, pocketing it and standing up resolutely. He walked to the back of the bar and right through the 'Employees Only' door, and into the back room. The startled worker that stood before him met a quick dispatching into unconsciousness with a kick to the groin from the tall, gray-clad man's military issue steel-toeds, and a chop to the back of the neck.

Baretta was there for information. Apparently there was a Chinese-British man by the name of Lei Chang hiding out in Japan to escape the growing tension in the United Kingdom.

Baretta didn't like deserters. But what he liked even less than that, were people who kept political problems going for their own benefit. Lei Chang held, in his possession, something that held a great deal of value to their cause. And he was using his possession of the item as a means to draw out the currently building conflict that was going on back in England that, day by day, inched closer to full-scale war.

Looking around the back room, his eyes fell on the circuit breaker. Walking over to it, he opened the metallic casing, scanning the labeling on it before realizing he couldn't read Japanese, and really had no wish to have learned. Hearing the scurry of footsteps rushing his way, he flipped one of his handguns over so he held it by the barrel, before slamming the butt of the handle into the circuit breaker, shorting out all the power. He was quite thankful that this caused the power to be lost to the PA system, as the screeching coming from whoever was on stage at the time was so annoying he was surprised his ears weren't bleeding, or hadn't stopped working altogether in protest of their foul treatment.

The door behind him flew open, but the darkness in the room allowed him to hide silently. Slipping the handgun back into his holsters, he reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a Billy club. Someone walked, what he assumed was supposed to be quietly, in front of him, and he received a thump on the back of the head with the club that sent him in a heap onto the floor.

Baretta knew he lacked the fighting finesse that Kyoto held, but in all his time, he never knew a time where he needed it. It didn't need to look pretty if you were going to be the only one leaving the fight alive, or in condition enough to talk about, nonetheless remember, the fight.

The next man that rushed him learned the Fallen's philosophy first hand, as he received a straight side-kick to the side of his knee cap, shattering it under the power of Baretta's kick enhanced by the weight of the boots he wore. Falling to one knee, his jaw was shattered by the slamming of the Billy club to his face. Baretta had no idea if the man lived at all, but he didn't care. His looking down to think about it caused another man to be able to get fairly close to him. Baretta felt a hand wrap around his neck. Bringing the club in his hand up, he slammed it into the underside of man's elbow, effectively breaking it into fragments.

The recoil this caused was enough time for Baretta to side-step and ram the injured man's head into the now destroyed circuit breaker. There was the sound of an electric surge before the body slumped to the ground.

The last man to rush Baretta met a backhand before he was pinned down by Baretta's knee on his chest. "Where is Lei Chang?"

The man's face was in view because of how close Baretta was to him, and Baretta grinned to himself seeing not a bit of confusion cross the man's eyes. However, instead of answering, as Baretta knew he understood the question, he began rambling off in Japanese. Rolling his eyes, Baretta stretched one of the man's hands out and then slammed the bottom of the Billy club onto his pinky finger. The snap of bones echoed around the room.

"I'll ask again. Where is Lei Chang?"

The interrogation continued well into the toes. By the time Baretta got the information he was seeking and opened a rip and disappeared from the scene, the man had 2 toes still operational and the rest of his digits were in a state of uselessness. Including his groin area, the abuse of which had been a particularly loud event, but had also been the breaking point in the man's silence. The police arrived to a broken man laying on the ground in a fetal position sobbing. After an assessment of what had happened, the lead ranking officer glanced down at the broken man silently before pulling out his side-arm.

"It would have been best for you to have stayed silent. You would have died either way, but now, instead of dying at this mysterious man's hands with honor, you will die at mine, a spineless betrayer. You are a disgrace" he spoke in Japanese, before pulling the trigger.

-----

"I need a nap."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"But _Mum…_"

"No."

"…"

"No."

"So you don't want to retire to my place and be tired out?"

"No…Wait…Dammit Harry!"

Harry laughed to himself as he continued scanning the papers in front of him. Blaise was tinkering away at the computer in front of her in the library they were working at, both looking for the same information. Some trace of Lucius Malfoy.

After much prodding, Kyoto had revealed the blonde had been bitten and thusly became a vampire, and with the vampirism virus being much more dangerous than the lycanthrope virus, when left in the hands of one such as Malfoy, their priority was the find the man. Whereas the leader of the werewolves, one Fenrir Greyback, was quite ornery, he was really only a contamination hazard once a month. However, every night was bite night for Lucius, it seemed. And Baretta was getting tired of hunting vampires.

Said Fallen had decided to go on his own personal road trip to some place without so much as a word, and Kyoto was in Australia last they heard from him, no one exactly sure how he ended up there considering the man had a habit of never carrying any money with him.

That left Lulu, Harry and Blaise, all of whom were currently sitting in the library around a table doing various things. Blaise was darting around on the internet searching for information of unexplained happenings, thankful that Rose had given her open access to the older girl's departmental database. Harry was reading through the newspapers, not expecting much from the more upstanding ones, but the tabloids working well to give him some hope of finding something remotely useful. Lulu in her own right was being no help, but was also not being a distraction. She sat in a chair filing at her nails, her long hair behind her reaching the floor as she leaned the chair back on its back two legs. Harry often watched the woman, she was intriguing to him.

The first time he had seen her in a straight up battle, which had been against a werewolf they had run across, she had awed him simply by the simplicity of her motions, casting the spells she did made her not the most mobile of targets, but she was by far the most area-damaging of the group. One of her spells had decimated the wolf, along with two others from his pack he had called as back-up. They had been small and newly turned, not the most powerful of wolves, but they had still been above human in power, and they were still felled by the spell Lulu had cast.

The woman had walked away as if nothing had happened, still eyeing Kyoto out of the corner of her eye. The two of them had an odd situation, even Harry could see that. Lulu would speak during group discussions and get told, quite rudely, to shut her mouth by Kyoto. Lulu seemed to often times try and back Kyoto up over every else, as if trying to make something up to the man, a past discrepancy she had made perhaps, but often times the help when unwanted, or even became counterproductive.

At one point Kyoto had cornered Lucius and was giving the man a thorough beating, including such moves as a kick to the groin, putting cigarettes out in various places on the blonde's body, as well as a backhand that spun the vampire around, causing him to take the punch that followed to the back of the head. The man was downed and Kyoto was moving in for the kill when Lulu began to cast a fire-based spell on the downed Malfoy. Kyoto was forced to move out of the way, therefore unable to press his advantage, which ended up costing them all as Lucius was saved by another Death Eater spear-tackling Lulu, sending her spell awry and allowing Lucius to get away with a quickly activated portkey.

As Harry contemplated Lulu, he was pulled back to concentrating as Blaise apparently found something. He knew she had found something important just a second before she gasped it out, which was another thing he had found interesting, being able to feel her like that. He glanced over and saw her gazing at one of the websites. She pointed to it and Harry moved around to check on it and gasped as well. He checked the time at the bottom of the screen on the computer before cursing to himself. "We need to go now."

"Yeah…Damn I wish Kyoto and Baretta were around, would make this a lot easier."

Harry nodded in agreement of Blaise, before glancing to Lulu. She looked up at him and raised an elegant eyebrow, not making any attempt to stand. Harry sighed before reaching down and lifting his pack up, the woman was just so bloody _difficult!_ Blaise grabbed her pack as well and grabbed his hand after closing down the windows on the computer. They headed toward the door, not looking back. Halfway to the door, they heard a loud sigh and the sound of feet behind them. Harry grinned to Blaise, keeping his back to the incoming Lulu.

"Nice to have you with us." Harry spoke just loud enough for Lulu to know he was talking to him. He could almost hear her roll her eyes at this. He smiled to himself before opening the door and holding it open until she got there, something that he knew she hated.

-----

Operating out of the back of a large van is usually reserved for child molesters, police undercover operations, and people selling things from the back of said van, be it clothing, music or illegal wares. The back of the van they were operating out of however, had enough swag that, should they get searched, all of them would be in jail for life, and with Kyoto and Baretta and their undetermined lifespans, that would be much too long for their own goods.

Sliding into the driver's seat, Lulu adjusted the mirrors and moved the seat forward to accommodate her short stature. Kyoto was by far the tallest of them all, however his legs took most of his height, so while the seat was far back, the mirrors weren't in such a place to reflect a taller-while-seated person. Whereas Baretta was a lot more bulky, he was by far the tallest, seated. His mirrors were raised as such, especially since he had the tendency to use them to gaze at those in the backseat to shoot them sour glances when they did something to annoy him, like breathing too loudly, or at all.

Lulu adjusted everything before starting the van. Harry was sitting in the back, tinkering with a stack of magazines for his handguns. The standard ones he used never ran out of ammunition because of Baretta's toying with space and time. However, there were other sets of magazines, ones that Harry and Blaise enchanted with different magic. Harry was currently holding a set that held flame enchantments on them, added damage to the vampires. He suspected they'd run into a good lot of them, considering Lucius had decided to open his own hive, something Harry himself knew wasn't going well with the vampire council.

Not that Voldemort gave a damn about that particular group of people.

Blaise on the other hand was meditating. It was something she did before a big fight, centering her mind. It also allowed her to easily draw on more of Harry's Demonic powers, and a lot more quickly. This helped her reflexes a lot, she found, and when operating with vampires, it helped her a lot to be stealthy and do a lot of damage from behind with them unaware of her presence, usually a vein nicking, throat slashing or vertebrae severing. But should they decide to not die from this and turn to her, the added boost to her speed to get her out alive while Harry finished them off helped a lot.

Lulu put the van in gear and merged onto the street. Or tried. A shiny red convertible nearly rammed them, before laying on the horn and the guy inside of it began shouting many expletives at Lulu. Seeing her fingering her scythes, Harry rolled his eyes and yanked open the back door to the van and jumped out.

His boots hit the pavement and he walked calmly to the driver's side of the car. His hands jammed deep in his pockets, a flat grin plastered to his face. Coming up to the side of the car, he looked down at the driver who, in his rush to hurl more insults at Lulu, hadn't even heard Harry arrive.

Leaning against the car, Harry watched the man for a bit longer. He wore bright, pastel shades of pink and green that Harry honestly didn't think any male should be wearing. When the man didn't acknowledge Harry's existence and kept shouting, the dark haired boy finally grew tired of it.

Reaching up and wrapping the man's pompous ponytail around his hand, he bounced his head off of the steering wheel. It wasn't something he would have done months ago, he admitted to himself, but something about being surrounded by death so much, death, pain and horror, made it so he lacked tolerance for people who acted like he was, about such simple things as a parking space or a car.

He had watched people killed indiscriminately for little things in this war, someone shouting at one of the few people fighting and being hurt to save their lives without them even knowing was something Harry wouldn't deal with.

Reaching in and opening the car door from the inside, he pulled the now unconscious man from his car before getting into the driver's seat. Blaise had since gotten out of the back of the van, and seeing the look on Harry's face, had closed the door after grabbing his and her bags. Opening the door, the now unconscious, brightly-dressed man's girlfriend, who had been sitting, open-mouthed, watching this whole set of events, screeched and hopped from the car.

She sat down in the passenger's seat and smiled at Lulu, who chuckled at the girl before being waved into traffic by Harry. She drove out ahead of him, and he gunned the car's engine before following behind her, smirking as Blaise scratched the back of his head gently.

-----

Baretta hated the color pink.

Deeply.

He had often times toyed with the idea of shooting anyone who wore it. However, after chancing a day outside on a holiday called "St. Valentine's Day", he realized that it could possibly test the truth to his "never-ending" ammunition theory.

He still toyed with the idea quite often, the color was, in fact, quite offensive.

However, standing at this party, his hate for the color grew even greater. Everything was pink. All shades of the color, from pale and disgusting, to bright and obnoxious, to loud and overwhelming. He had been on a lead for a bit concerning the daughter of Lei Chang. She was engaged, and her bachelorette party was to begin. Knocking on the door, it was quickly flung open by an awkwardly blonde woman with what looked to be a mass of makeup on her forehead. She cheered and yanked him in before slamming the door behind him.

"Girls, look who's here…" She spoke as she led him into a room full of females about the same age, all dressed in the same mass of pink.

"Who?" They all chimed.

"The _stripper!"_ The girl shouted, before pushing Baretta on the back gently, and then running over and slapping a stereo system. Music began to play and everyone in the room cheered. All but Baretta, who had to physically remove his right hand from the handle of his handgun. He was feeling in deep need of a bullet-storm in that room, as the girls wailed and shouting for him to "take it off."

Glancing around the room, his eyes narrowed as he checked for the girl he was searching for. He knew which one it was, as she was the one wearing a very stupid looking witches' hat, with a shimmy pink veil. He had to decide what to do, he really had no intention of stripping for anyone in the room, as not a one of them looked too old to even be out of school.

Deciding for a more direct route, he walked over to her, grabbed her arm, lifted her up and walked her into a side room of the hotel room. He slammed the door to cat-calls from the other girls in the room. Locking the door, he turned back to the girl before removing his duster and tossing it to the side. Her eyes glanced over his sleeveless black shirt and his faded, almost gray, blue jeans.

They then locked onthe gun holsters at his sides. As she watched this, he reached down to the back belt-hoop of his pants and pulled out a tube. Shaking it, it revealed itself to be a telescoping rod of some kind. Clicking a button on the side, it revealed itself to be a cattle prod. Grinning to himself, he held the button down, allowing the electricity to jump between to two protruding studs on the end so she could see it.

"So…I still might end up taking my clothes off. If you make this hard, that is. Electrocuting someone can be quite physically intensive, after-all, and I may get a bit sweaty.

"Or, I could stay dressed, you could give me answers, and not feel like you shoved a knife into an electrical socket. So…decision is yours, after all, this is your party. You can cry if you want to."

And he grinned evilly at her before sending the electricity into a visible incarnation before the girl's eyes. Oh how he loved interrogations.

-----


	5. Chapter 4

**FFOmega**

Part II: Crimson Rain

Chapter 4

Lucius was having a bad day.

The Dark Lord had made the man the leader of the vampire campaign, and that showed a level of trust that made the blonde quite happy with himself. However, he had been turned to guard duty at the time, as the vampires were a lot more agile and able to stop any imposing force with fierce lack of discrimination. For it was imperative that the Dark Lord not be interrupted at the current time.

After all, he was mid-Demon summon.

…Again.

Lucius found it quite comical, privately of course, that the so called "Dark Ruler" couldn't summon a demon, nonetheless become a Halfling. Lucius found this all the more interesting in the case that Lucius should decide to revolt. The man whom he had served with such abandon and loyalty, barring claiming Imperius when caught, of course, would be easy pickings with the troops behind Lucius, and the simple act of divesting the other man of his wand.

But he was, after all, loyal. Thus why these thoughts never entered Lucius' mind…publicly.

No, he saved such thoughts for his own room in what had been set up as his own personal fortress. The place he was at the time was under a special Fidelius comprised of several parts. Anyone who didn't already know where the place was before the spell was cast would have to collect all the scraps of parchment comprising the note detailing the location of the place. It was installed as a safeguard for the Dark Lord upon realizing that he had enemies. More enemies than he initially thought.

He became aware of the sound of footsteps in the distance. He dropped low, fingering his dragon heartstring wand he always kept in his hand when going into deep tangents within his own mind, and shuffled to the side into the shadows. The footsteps drew closer, and he slowly raised his wand to intercept them. However, as the figure walked into sight, Lucius found himself being stared at as if he was standing under a bright light instead of hidden in the deepest shadows he could find.

"I will do you no harm. I am simply here to help your seemingly incompetent 'Master' finally work out something that was adolescent work a mere 2 centuries ago." Something about the cynicism in the voice of the man before Lucius made him nod. That, and the ethereal aura surrounding him making the man appear there, but not. Lucius could even swear he could just see through the man before him if he squinted his eyes.

Stalking through the door with his footsteps echoing much too loudly to be normal, the door slammed behind him, and Lucius was left staring at the door as it closed in his face. Something significant had just transpired and he had no idea why he knew that.

-----

Kyoto had been at his weekly karaoke meeting when he paused in the middle of his rendition of "Kung-Fu Fighting" as a feeling bolted through his body. Something was wrong, very wrong, and it was causing his hand to shake as he held the microphone before it simply tipped out of his hand and landed on the floor, causes the speaker to emit a loud, high-pitched sound, and when the people that had been in the audience opened their eyes and uncovered their ears, he was gone.

-----

Harry and Blaise sat in the car staring up at the night sky, increasingly bored. They were supposed to be Lulu's "lookout", but the woman was more than capable of taking care of herself as far as what she was doing went, leaving the pair bored. Blaise was drawing pictures in the sky with sparks that would stay suspended in the sky once shot. Harry for his own part was having fun trying to guess what it was she was drawing before the picture was completed, which infuriated Blaise to no end since several times he was right much too early, even before the spark-created picture even began to take shape, making her have to wipe the sparks clear and figure out something else to draw.

Harry got a call on his phone and the caller hung up after the 1st ring. This was meant to be a signal from whoever was out to their lookout that they had gotten close to finishing what they were doing. Harry glanced down at the phone which Baretta had apparently pulled from a time/space pocket from a tear he hadn't even created yet. So in some weird way, the phones were from the future, what time, none of them were sure of. Not even Baretta.

Which left the question of…exactly how they had cellular service in the first place. And how a company that potentially wasn't even created yet, was being alerted to the calls they made.

Suddenly Harry's eyes went blank, and his mouth opened in a silent scream. Blaise stared at him before the feedback through her link with him hit her, and her vision went out from the pain that was passing through her. She rolled out of the car door and stumbled around the car and pulled open Harry's door. He fell out and landed in a heap, before Blaise fell down to him and rolled him over. His eyes were dull and if it was possible, she'd say his entire body was pulsing. It wasn't a shake, and it wasn't consistent enough to be a kind of vibration, it was like his whole body would pulse to some rhythm she couldn't understand.

However, before she could figure out what to do, there was shouting and bright lights from the building Lulu had gone into, and the number of voices ensured them that something was wrong.

"This woman has horrible timing." Harry groaned out, before standing unsteadily.

---

The castle of Hogwarts was under attack.

It was a very interesting development.

Before, it was heralded as a fortress, "No one would dare attack Hogwarts" they said.

And here they were, locking the doors, doubling up the wards, and sticking every child who wasn't fifth-year and over in the dungeons.

Or trying. Cleo was proving an old saying, you can't beat what you can't catch. And she had evaded capture so long they gave up looking for her.

The Defense classes were standing in front of the large doors that lead into the castle, weapons out and fighting stances in place. Something big was going on, and none of them knew what, all they knew was the perimeter wards sounded and they were all put in lockdown until the Headmaster arrived looking grave. Ms. Madison and Mr. Long had rallied them all together, and within moments they were out on the defensive, weapons, wands, and the like ready.

Ernie and Justin, along with a group of 5th years they had taken under their wing, were stationed atop the castle, on sniping duty. They had placed a spot of land under a heavy cushioning charm if they needed to join the melee, and they each had a bracelet that Ms. Madison had Enchanted with a slow-fall spell so they could descend slow enough to take some cover shots should they need to drop into the fray of a fight.

Dean was leaning on his War-Axe, strapping on the armor Mr. Long had made and Ms. Madison had enchanted for several people. It had very heavy damage-reduction and shielding spells woven into the material. Dean's was a hunter green with golden runes running along it, which was actually the same color scheme as his axe was beginning to take.

His hair was in cornrows again, but holding the ponytail of braids at the back was a golden band. It was the emergency band that the more melee-intensive were given. It had a short-duration shield spell that would block physical and magical damage, although the killing curse would still get through. It was solid in composition, and would form a dome around the activator, that would cut through anything the dome would otherwise divide, be it landscape, or other people.

It would last for as long as the user's magic would, and then it would act as an emergency portkey back into the castle, to allow the thusly exhausted, magically, fighter to rest. They were stocked with several potions that would spike their adrenaline, and restore magical energy to them. They had a downside that was a hell of a come-down off of the slight high they gave, leaving the user in an actual deficit, magically, and physically exhausted.

Ms. Madison stood at the front of the group. Her weapons were in her hands as her hood blew behind her. She was wearing armor she hadn't touched in many years, pushing a decade in fact. It was hidden under a black cloak that's hood was being held back. There were runes all along the lining of the entire cloak, that were done in a blood red color.

She had warned Mr. Long when she had pulled the cloak out of the metal casing it, and the armor she wore beneath it, were help in. She wouldn't be available for classes for the next week, assuming there were any. And assuming any of them survived the coming battle. The enchantments done on the cloak was an effort that was her life's work. She had begun it while still in school, and even up until the last time she had worn the cloak, was nowhere near done. The rune work was exceptional to the point of being prodigious in design. Hermione had caught a glimpse and actually fainted.

The runes were woven into the fabric of the cloak with unicorn mane hairs soaked in the woman's blood mixed with that of the unicorn the hairs came from. There were other steps to this, but no one but she would ever know about them. The runic scheme on the armor and most importantly the robe itself was a closely guarded secret for good reason. It took the idea of the potions all the children were given to a whole other level.

They pushed her body to superhuman levels. Agility, strength, dexterity, senses, hand-eye coordination, visual processing, everything. The cloak did all of this, but the downside was, the time she spent in this state burned her body's energy reserves badly. Her body would run on everything it had while in this state, and eat at any spare energy it could get. The first of the body functions it would literally shut down to keep her active was her ability to feel pain, or touch at all. It would take a good while before she could get back into full health.

The last time she had used the cloak, before the armor beneath it was completed, or the full runic scheme on the current cloak was done, she had lost 15 pounds in the 30 minutes she had been in her hyper-state, and had the shakes for over a week.

The armor beneath was a whole other story. It was laced with charms to the point that she was reduced to naught but a muggle, magically, as every ounce of her magic went to powering the armor. It was as near indestructible as any single thing could possibly be as far as she knew, but moved like silk.

This had taken a lot of runic work on her part, as she had actually had to use dragon tears, a very rare, super-acidic compound, to make the grooves for the runes. She had then filled the grooves with her blood and actually used a set of chemicals to crystallize it. The armor was then superheated with dragon flames until it was on the verge of melting, before the final runes were done. The runes locked the armor into an eternal liquid-like state. It was then shaped into the pieces that were needed, and once they had settled it was almost like a fabric, but when touched, felt similar to what she assumed holding a piece of fabric made of water would feel like.

The armor had runes along the arms that kept a permanent speed charm on her arms for fast weapon movement. The body held a set of runes that cast a hardening charm as well as a perimeter shielding charm on her. The back held a hidden rune set that set a perimeter ward around her, allowing her to identify who was around her, even if she couldn't see them. Her feet held light-footed charms, the legs a charm that would allow her to jump higher, further, and kick harder. Finally, the circlet across the top of her head narrowed her eyesight to make her able to see much further when she focuseds her eyes on something far away, and when not focused, extends her peripheral vision.

It was an amazing set of armor, and if the drawbacks weren't so steep, it would make her a fortune. But the creation of the armor alone had decreased her lifespan immediately by 40 years. This wouldn't have been a big issue, considering the fact that witches of her magical ability tended to live around 150 years. However, the first use of the armor had dropped her lifespan by another 20, but even worse, had actually permanently dropped her magical ability.

And as the rumbling of the advancing adversaries coming toward the school echoed toward them through the forest, she realized how long she would have to be in they hyper-state her armor allowed. And she prayed that she would be able to get her magic back at all once it was over. But having magic did her no good if she didn't survive long enough to use it, so she was willing to risk it.

She tossed the Shield katana into the ground, before pulling out her wand. Pulling the hood up and over her head before casting a sticking charm on it, she handed it to Mr. Long as he stepped up next to her. It would be the last spell she would cast for the day, she knew it. He took her wand, and waited as she picked her katana back up, and he cast quick sharpening charms on her weapons before turning to her.

"If it gets bad, I want you to activate the Insurance Portkey. You won't have magic to power the shield, so it will bypass that and immediately put you into the castle. Promise me, Angel. I won't see you dying out here."

She didn't say a word, simply nodded before turning and walking away from him to stand by herself.

"Dammit girl, I don't know what goes through your head. Brilliant, but how can you be…So. Damned. Stupid?"

---

Kyoto had found Harry rather quickly, and Baretta had moseyed on in, looking for every bit a cowboy as he sported a large gray fedora. Blaise had geared herself up in her fighting gear, her hair pulled back and up. She knew a fight was coming, she could feel it radiating off of Harry. He was dressed in his usual black clothes, boots, gloves and coat, the large sword strapped to his back. Lulu was producing a small ball of fire above her hand before snapping it away and producing a ball of ice, and going down the elemental chart before beginning again.

They all knew something was going on, somewhere in the back of their minds. But it was confirmed when Kyoto tied his hair atop his head, snapped his fingers, and Baretta reached into his rip and pulled out a huge duffle bag. Lulu tried to muffle a laugh at how feminine Kyoto looked with his hair back, but he heard her and narrowed his eyes, before turning back to what he was doing.

He dropped the bag on the ground, and stooped down and opened it. It was full of weapons, all types, and some that looked either incredibly old, or advanced it was doubtful they were from the current time period. "Something big has happened. And it's headed toward your old school. So we're headed there too. Why? Cause I like trouble. Trouble and I are having an affair and I can't get enough of her. She does this thing with her tongue…wow. But you're all too young for this conversation."

Lulu raised an eyebrow, Harry turned away and grabbed the white backpack that was near Blaise, and Blaise pecked him on the cheek before jumping on his back. Harry tossed the sword to Baretta, who placed it in the duffle bag and tossed it back in the rip. With a slight bend of his knees, Harry took off running toward the ledge that they had been standing at, before leaping off into the distance.

Baretta opened up his rip and stepped through, muttering "I got shit to do. Meet you there."

Kyoto turned to Lulu, sneered at her, before leaping straight up. She stared up as he disappeared from her line of sight, and then huffed and pouted. She threw her scythes down and folded her arms like a small child having a tantrum. Kyoto landed moments later and gave her a light slap to the back of her head, before pointing down to the scythes. Lulu picked them up, only to have Kyoto snatch them from her. He turned his back to her, and motioned for her to jump on. She got a running start and jumped, just to have him move out of the way, leaving her to fall on the ground.

"Don't laugh at the person giving you a ride, bitch." He muttered, before lifting her up off the ground, placing her on his back, and setting his feet. He reached back to "adjust" her on his back, giving him two handfuls of her behind. She hit him on the head, and he laughed to himself as she laughed out loud.

"But you make such a pretty girl, albeit flat-chested."

"Ha ha. And I guess you have more than enough in that area for the both of us. Care to share?" He muttered sardonically.

"Sure, grab some any time you want." She answered into his ear, before actually biting it. He rolled his eyes, despite it being impossible for anyone to know he did so, before adjusting her on his back again, this time with a grip on her legs instead. "Awww…but I do wonder, what would your name be if you were a girl?"

She laughed to herself before he muttered "Kasumi." She stared at the back of his head before suddenly they were rocketing through the sky.

It wasn't much, but she knew she was making some progress away from being completely hated by the man she was riding on the back of. It was shameless flirting on her part that he seemed very good in countering, but his heart wasn't in it, which was odd, one is usually not turned down when they have an amazing hourglass figure, and prance about all day in a leather cat-suit and a bikini top underneath, but that was exactly what had happened.

As they descended on to the next rooftop roughly a few hundred yards from their point of takeoff, which she knew he would just jump off of once more, she muttered to him, "Speed up, I wanna beat Harry and Blaise. Pedal to the metal, Kasumi-chan!"

He was silent for a moment through the next jump up. It wasn't until they were high up in the sky that he replied. "Bitch, I _will_ drop you." There was a laugh in his voice though, as he reached back and spanked her behind. "Don't get too comfortable, once we get there, you're on your own. I may not hate you as much anymore, but I won't play Captain Save-A-Ho."

She bit his ear again, and laughed for a good mile as they joked back and forth.

---

"Hello. I'm Baretta, and I've been drinking for…longer than most of you have been alive."

"Hello Baretta" the crowd answered back, as the man in his gray duster stood at the podium.

"I love alcohol. Its delicious. Clear, dark, sweet, sour, strong, shit...isopropyl. I love alcohol. In fact, I think I'll have some now." He pulled out a large bottle of Bacardi, and tilted his head back, guzzling it like water. He looked down at the stunned faces of the people in front of him. "Oh don't worry, I have manners. I bought enough for the whole class." And he pulled out a stack of paper cups from seemingly nowhere. He then set them to the side and poured the cups full.

"Help yourself." His alarm on his watch suddenly went off. "Seems I have to be going, I'll just leave the bottle right here, I have one more stop to make. Thank you all, and goodbye."

And with that Baretta walked out of the building, smiling to himself, patting the sign that had drawn him in on the way before musing to himself, "I love Alcoholics Anonymous meetings."

And he laughed to himself as the echo of stampeding feet, shouts of "the bottle's mine!" and the sound of about 30 people falling off "the wagon" wandered out of the building behind him.

"I'm such an asshole. I love it." He muttered before opening a rip and disappearing through it to his last stop before the school.

---

Auror Nymphadora Tonks was existing in a haze. She had been called off on a long-term assignment with the Unspeakables early in the summer. It was unexpected, and what was worse, she was incapable of contacting anyone to inform them. So just after her revelation to Harry about what was going on with her feelings, she is pulled off to a mission that she wasn't even allowed to maintain her memories of. And now, here she is, standing before the doors to Hogwarts, awaiting the incoming siege, and feeling as if the castle weighed less than her thoughts.

Upon her stationing, she ran right to the school, looking to find Harry. Immediately on arrival, she was filled in on the months that Harry had had since Tonks had been called away by an unlikely source, that of Jamie Zabini. Her heart cracked as Jamie spoke fondly of the boy, and her daughter, and their relationship. However, the information concerning Bellatrix, Kyoto's turning of Harry, and his saving of Bellatrix's life had rocked Tonks' world's foundation to the core.

The fact that he was Turned into a half-demon left her world turned on its ear, and garnered conflicting emotions in the woman. She was a Black by birth, and they were far from the purest of blood, despite what they said, her aunt Narcissa's Veela blood proved that, but she had been raised to fear Demons, as had most if not all of proper Wizarding culture. If Albus Dumbledore said something was evil, and to be feared and untouched, then you damn well feared and didn't touch it.

And more-over, she couldn't figure out how she felt about Harry. To hear the things that had occurred since she had last seen him, was as if hearing all her long held beliefs were backwards all along.

She stared off into the distance from her post, allowing the thoughts to process through her head as she twirled her wand in her hand, awaiting the incoming fight. "Wherever you are, Harry, I hope you're safe."

---

"I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys-R-Us Kid, there's a million toys up in this bitch, that I can play with!" Baretta was in a very good mood. He was in his element. The fact that said element happened to be a black market gun depot in a warehouse district run entirely by the Mob was all for the better, in his eyes. People in glass houses don't throw stones. And organizations who become infamous for making people who run their mouths disappear, don't ask you why you're asking to buy a high-powered sniper rifle at 4 in the morning.

And that made Baretta quite happy.

"You know that's not how that song goes, right?"

Happy evaporated the moment the depot's current attendant inquired the man's knowledge. However, no more words were said as the large case was slid across the table.

Baretta dropped it into the shopping cart he was pushing, and also paid for a box of .44 magnum bullets, .45 colt longs, a .357 magnum, a pearl-handled chrome .38 Special with assorted bullets, a slew of armor-piercing rounds and a retractable baton. A bit of looking around in the large area of not-completely illegal wares, and he found a few other interesting things to buy. He walked out with his armory-purchases, as well as a nail gun, a welding torch, 50 yards of duct tape, 50 yards of rope, 10 yards of razor wire, and last but not least, an extra large bag of Cheetos.

Opening the bag delicately as he pushed the cart to an alley, where he opened a rip and placed it all in his sub-space compartment, Baretta continued to sing, bobbing his head side to side as he opened a movement rip to get to the school. "From Glocks and .9s, to Colt .45s, it's the greatest toy store there is! I don't wanna grow up, 'cause baby if I did! I couldn't be a Toys-R-Us Kid!"

---


End file.
